The Guardians, A Max Ride Futurefic
by Lerial.R.Shadewing
Summary: Seventy years after Saving The World ended, there is a new threat, not Itex, no, this threat defies science, logic, and reason, and only the five grandchildren of the famous flock can fight this danger, they will rise, and they will defend, and bring a new meaning to the phrase, The Guardians. All Canon pairings, futurefic, This is the flock's grandkids, not the flock.
1. Prologue

_Beep…beep…beep…beep_

Grace stared at the monitor, for now the patient's heart was beating at a regular pace. She glanced from her clipboard into the sun-weathered face of the girl lying there. Poor child, Grace thought, having no choice in the matter of her fate, but, no one had a choice in this, not even Grace herself. She sighed, and closed the curtain around the girl's coma-like body and walked to look at the other subjects, three adolescents, other than the first girl, all with machines hooked up to their bodies and screens monitoring everything from heart rate to cellular count.

It was late, and as Grace looked down at the faces of the teens, she slumped her shoulders, and watched the peaceful faces; little did they know about what was to come, the Outbreak had crept up on them, and the future of earth was uncertain, but what could they do anyway? Itex, Genotech, and all the other research centers were powerless against the force that had risen up to defy Science, Logic, or Reason. They were powerless against what had come, and were powerless to stop it.

But, maybe the Patients were, maybe the children before Grace could possibly eradicate this danger? This…this…evil? It was in the hands of God now, and even Grace, as a scientist, could do nothing but hope, and pray, that it would all turn out alright.

"Grace, why are you working so late?" Came a voice that jolted Grace out of her thoughts, she turned, and saw the young blond man before her, he smiled slightly, and Grace recovered, he was dressed in the mandatory lab coat, but had on beach shorts and a T-shirt on underneath.

"Josh, I might say the same thing to you. Isn't it your bedtime?" Grace smirked; Josh narrowed a pair of gray eyes and slipped his hands into his pockets. He just shot her a friendly glare and Grace chuckled, even though she was twice his age, they were still good friends and colleagues.

"I wanted to get the filing done for the week. Anyway, are you on weekend duty? The Patients will be gaining consciousness in a few days." Josh asked, raising an eyebrow at Grace. Grace simply shrugged, and turned back to her earlier thoughts of what came next, and the future that would be shaped by the Patients.

"Josh, can I tell you something?" Grace whispered, turning her head to Josh, he looked up, and met her aged brown eyes with his light gray ones.

"You can tell me anything." Josh grinned, trying to lighten the mood, alas, he did not succeed.

"The Patients, the Outbreak, do you really think it will work? Or are we just kicking a dead horse?" Grace asked softly, pushing a few strands of her gray hair that had come loose from her bun. Josh paused, as if to analyze the question, such was his talent, which got him picked to work with this division, in this crisp white building with machines beeping and no windows.

"I don't know, we can only hope, it's not often you'll hear me say that, but for once, I really don't know…" Josh trailed off, and Grace put a hand on his shoulder, he was leaning on one of the rails by a Patient's bed, and he looked stressed and angry.

Grace wasn't surprised, Josh, the best pyrotechnic and problem-solver in the world, would not want to be admitted wrong, he would not want to not know. Unlike most people who went into science, Josh thrived on routine and predictability. He should have gone into math, because here in science, two plus two didn't always equal four.

"No matter what, we all die someday Josh, this I know, if we can leave this world knowing we tried to better it, then that is all I could ever ask." Grace said softly with a smile, glancing at the Patients,

"Yeah, we tried…"

Seventy years after Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports ended, a new threat has risen, and the grandchildren of the famous flock are about to step up to defend what is left of humanity with the only way they know how…

With battle.

Yes, so here it is, fin-ah-freaking-ly yeah, well, enjoy.

Oh, just some sidenotes,

~Dylan existed, he popped up later, but is not in this story.

~Max and Fang ended up together.

~The five main characters are all grandchildren of the flock, and children of Canon pairings.

~If you want to know the inspiration for this, search The Zombie Hunters on Google, it's a comic about the zombie apocalypse, and I highly suggest reading it.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_Five Months Later_

"Chloe, come in Chloe, God damn it, Roxy? Jacob? Someone come in! Ah fuck, those bastards! They left me here!" I spat, pulling the ear mic away from my head and growling, if I get out of here alive they would have some serious explaining to do.

_Urrrrgggggghhhhhh_

There came a moan to my left, and I leaped up, uttering curses, bloody zombies, way to freak me out. I turned my head to see the dismembered body of a woman ambling over to me with the oh-so-famous zombie limp, its bottom jaw was unhinged and the moaning it produced was weirder than most zombies, which made sense, kind of.

The zombie was in rags, and it stared at me, before lunging, I hesitated for a moment, and it slashed my arm with its protruding bone fingers. That jolted me out of my shock, and I did what any sane person would have done, I took off running at top speed.

Now normally this would be no problem, I mean, I've handled these undead bastards too many times to count, but the fact I couldn't contact anyone, plus the fact that night was falling, was just sending my mental alarm system up the wall.

I ran quickly, jumping over fallen debris on the abandoned street, I think it was Seattle? I dunno, I lose track of where we travel nowadays.

But, alas, you probably have no idea what I'm saying right? Okay, here's what happened, twenty years ago, something called the Outbreak happened, supposedly it was an infection that was released when human scientists began crossing the line from fucking around, to just plain crazy.

Yeah, I know, there's lots of stories about scientists fucking up, but listen, okay? This story holds the truth, well, most of it, even I don't know what happened before, details are fuzzy.

Anywho, back to my explanation, you see, for the first fifteen years it was fine, and the Outbreak was mostly just urban legend. The only ones who believed in it were considered crazy for thinking that zombies were about to take over the world.

But five years ago it got bad. The infection that had started the Outbreak had spread, and was affecting almost everyone, and humanity was trying to find a solution.

That brings us to the part about me and my friends, but in order to understand that mess, we have to go back seventy years before today. You see, seventy years ago, scientists were fucking around yes, but with genetics, and they created seven avian-human hybrids, which most of you know of as the Flock. Now, enough about a million years ago, the scientists needed someone to save the world, so they went and found the grandchildren of the almighty Flock, and put them into a sort of alteration coma, which changed our DNA while we slept.

They found four of the five families that hailed from the Flock, and took the children away, (sound familiar?) to do testing; we were supposed to save the world, like our grandparents. But three months after we woke up from the coma, the base was destroyed by zombies, and the four of us, Roxy, the granddaughter of Angel, Chloe, the granddaughter of Iggy, Jacob, the grandson of Gasman and Nudge, and yours truly, Lerial, the granddaughter of Dylan, had to get far away, fast. They never found Max and Fang's grandchild; I guess stealthiness ran in the family, but, I'm getting off topic, bottom line, the world went to shit, and me and my friends were supposed to save it, personally, I think we made it worse.

It was only too easy to see that when I ran through the dark streets of a once-famous city, now overrun by the undead.

Well, enough about that solemn crap, learn from the mistakes and all that. On the bright side, I think I was safe from the zombies, well, for now anyway, those things are everywhere. God I hope we, or somebody finds a way to stop them infecting people, because after that, it's just a matter of killing them off.

Not like it was hard to kill them either, at least the Crawlers, out of the six kinds of zombie they were the easiest to deal with. Ugh, but even they got annoying sometimes, just the sheer numbers of them.

Crawlers were the normal zombie, the one that was the default, special circumstances had to be present for the other types to be created. And why in the name of Jesus were there six types anyway? Why did we need six kinds of those bastards to deal with?

I'm pretty sure god hates us. Double Ugh. Speaking of Crawlers, it seemed they were intent on getting me because when I turned from the hiding place under a cardboard sign I had found. Yeah, crappy spot, but hey, zombie apocalypse here, anything that works will do. But, unfortunately, it no longer worked, because I heard a zombie approaching, and if it was close enough that I could hear it, it was close enough to smell me. _Fuck._ Oh well, I darted out, and swung a left, until I reached a warehouse, and ducked inside, there was a ladder to the second floor, which wasn't really a floor, but a platform that went all the way around the building on the inside. I managed to scramble up it, and kick it loose after I reached the top so that nothing, living or dead could follow me.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Fuck my life, stupid zombies, shut the fuck up. I quickly screwed on my silencer and aimed at the loudest of them, a quick pull of the trigger and the zombie had a hole in the right side of its chest, I was aiming for the head, which shows you how much of a dud I am with guns, fuck that, Chloe's better, a lot better. I took aim again and hit it in the eye. Score! Lerial- 1, Zombie Mothafuckas- 0. Maybe I was getting better at this, I aimed once again at another zombie that was trying to climb up some crates stacked in a corner, but missed and my shot hit the wall, well, it was obvious I was not getting better. Okay, I revise, Lerial- 1, Zombie Mothafuckas- 1.

As if my mental score was known by them, and they wanted to have a party, a fast shape crashed into some boxes below me, I let out some epiphanies and leaped back. I found myself staring right into the rotted eyeballs of a Spider Monkey. Double fuck my life, Spider Monkeys were so named because of their speed and agility, and they were one of the more troublesome species of zombie. And just because god hates me, another Spider Monkey appeared and started to try and climb up the wall to my platform.

Oh no you didn't, I aimed again and my shot went wide but hit a Crawler in the nose, well that's great, but I needed to take down those damn Spider Monkeys! I aimed once more, but a faint click within my gun was all that I heard. Shit, I was out of ammo, if I get out of here alive; Chloe is going to die for abandoning me.

In that instant there was a crash and a bang, and a dark shape swooped down from above, it was male, with black-and-brown wings, _wait, what? _In a spilt second the guy was there, crouching next to me, and he pulled out a grenade and threw it, pushing me down away from the blast, he was dressed in all black and had a really corny ski mask on. But the blast came, and I coughed when the debris fell on top of me, then, Mr.-ski-mask-and-wings was gone, up in the air, flying out a previously unnoticed hole in the roof.

I stood there, shocked, unable to move, staring up as he disappeared into the sky, and felt a presence beside me.

"Hey Lerial?" It was Chloe, Roxy and Jacob joined her, but I didn't take my eyes off the disappearing shape in the sky.

"What's she looking at?" Jacob asked, running a hand through his bleached blond hair,

"A black dot." Roxy replied, looking up, Chloe and Jacob looked up too, and they were silent for a second, then Chloe broke it.

"It's a nice black dot."

"Yeah."

"Definitely," Jacob and Roxy responded to her, and like the idiots we were, we stared at it until it was gone from sight. I paused, trying to figure out who it had been, I mean, who in their right mind would help a random chick in a warehouse, certainly not me if I had been in that situation.

But, as much as I liked to have deep philosophical thoughts on who my rescuer had been, I needed to murder Chloe for not answering the bloody ear-mic.

"Chloe…" I started; she turned to me, and smiled a cheeky smile. Chloe was short, about 5'5, with shoulder-length dirty-blond hair and vivid blue eyes that looked slightly green in the light. She was a small, slender girl, but looks can be deceiving, Chloe was ruthless, and quite skilled with technology and guns.

Roxy was standing behind her, and was still looking at the sky, and she looked like she was concentrating very hard. Like Chloe, when it came to Roxy, looks could be deceiving, Roxy was a poster child for the 'perfect girl', complete with a delicate frame, long black-brown hair, tanned skin, and innocent violet eyes. But she was a powerful telekinetic, and had a habit of levitating us while we slept as a practical joke. As cool as hovering is, it's annoying to wake up without anything to grab on to.

"What the…" Jacob said, his eyes widening as he saw the destruction that had been created when my mystery rescuer threw a grenade at the zombies. Jacob grinned and his red eyes took a slightly maniacal glow, yup, Jacob + bombs/fire = Oh crap. He was a pyro, plain and simple, which might be because the Gasman is his grandfather, just like his grandfather, Jacob has ice-blond hair that sticks up in a thousand directions, but unlike Gasman's blue eyes, Jacob's eyes were altered by Whitecoat named John to become a blood-red color. Now, I think I've been rambling on for quite a while, so, here's some minor information about us that you might like to hear.

Roxy is telekinetic, I guess the telepath genes she got from Angel were diluted into telekinesis, she's also got one hell of an intuition, but can be minorly distracting and chatty at times, usually at the worst possible time. Chloe is our tech-head, and she's the one that keeps the ear-mics and phones we carry around up and running in this gone-to-shit-apocalyptic-zombie-infested-planet that we call home. Oh, and Chloe can call up electricity, mostly in lightning, but she has to charge up on some abandoned power station or in the middle of a storm, otherwise, she's pretty much useless in the magical powers/skills/abilities/random-shit-that-we-can-do department.

Chloe could be very persuasive when she wanted, and had a knack thinking up the worst possible plan, safety-wise, which usually involved me risking my neck to get something done, and I personally thought she was a bitch because of that, but oh well, friends will be friends. Then we have Jacob, who, because of his lineage, was given an extra organ in some experiment so that he can shoot fire out of his hands, like a flamethrower, fortunately for us, it only works in hot weather, so he doesn't blast us or anything important all the time.

Oh, me? Well, I'm nothing special, I was just their attempt to see if they could revive the avian genes that exist in all of us. I guess it could be considered a failure or a success, depending on what you look at.

But, okay, fine, I'll tell you, they gave me wings, to revive the ¼ of my DNA which came from Dylan, but since it was only a ¼ of my DNA, some things were screwed, like that fact that I can't fold my wings against my back properly, and they are always folded in an X on my back, I can't fly properly either, only soar, because the bird that they bound my genes to was a seabird, which are known for soaring over long distances, NOT being able to escape zombies by dodging buildings. In my opinion, fuck the scientists, they didn't help me, and they didn't help us, they probably made the zombie crap themselves as some stupid test.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

**(Hey guys, Lerial here, Thanks for the reviews, so, I was told to tone down the swearing, sorry, we Canadians do like to swear, ^^' Well, I will take the advice to heart, but anyway, here's chapter 3)**

I glared at Jacob, Roxy and Chloe,

"Thanks for helping me." I laid on the sarcasm, and Roxy looked sheepish, Jacob avoided my gaze, and Chloe, being as psychotic as she was, just smiled creepily.

"We were… busy." Roxy muttered, not meeting my gaze, I rolled my eyes and tried and failed to push the dark winged-person from my mind.

"Busy my foot, what happened to the ear-mics?" I spat.

"Well, that's a long story, you see, Jacob's was out of power, so we thought we could syphon power from Chloe's but that ended with an explosion, and the explosion caused mine to be knocked out and it fell down a trash chute." Roxy explained, running a hand through her black-brown hair.

"Oh you've got to be freaking kidding me," I muttered, throwing my hands up in exasperation, "fine, whatever, let's get out of here before some more Crawlers appear, and, I had to deal with Eff-ing Spider Monkeys!" yeah, I was being a bitch, but at this point I didn't care, and just wanted to get out of here and find a hotel that wasn't over-run by zombies and still had working water.

"Well soooorrrreeee," Chloe said, narrowing her eyes, obviously tired of the Bitchy Lerial Interrogation, I narrowed my eyes, and Chloe glared.

"Now guys, no need to fight." Roxy said, faking a smile, I and Chloe would clash more often than not, and she was used to the routine, Jacob would just disappear whenever this happened, like he had now.

"It's not worth it." I said, suddenly tired, Chloe looked shocked, I never backed down without a fight, she knew that, so did Roxy, and their matching shocked expressions showed how they felt about it.

"Was it the black dot?" Jacob asked, walking back over, he had a small vile of the dust left from the explosion, probably so he could study it later to figure out what kind of bomb it had been.

I was silent, and the three of them exchanged looks, because Jacob was right, I was trying not to think of it, but the image of him, -I was certain it had been a guy- protecting me, and then leaving, was somehow stuck in my head and I couldn't think of anything else.

"Let's just go, Leri looks tired." Roxy said, glancing at me, for once, I didn't argue, and the four of us went down to the first level of the warehouse, and walked outside, a battered Subaru Forester was parked on the edge, Chloe got in to the driver's seat without a word and I piled in shotgun. Roxy and Jacob went in the back, Chloe said something, but I was zoned out looking out the window, and because god hates us, as soon as Chloe revved the engine to life, some Crawlers came running out of the alley-ways and tried to tackle the car.

"Shit!" Chloe yelled, and stepped on the gas pedal, causing some of the crawlers to be thrown off, but one was on the roof and Jacob opened the window and leaned out, only to have his arm hit by a heavy blunt object, He let out a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush, and Chloe narrowed her eyes. Damnit, we just couldn't catch a break could we?

Making a split decision, I opened the door of the car and jumped out, snapping out my golden-yellow wings in the process, my knee scraped the ground, and just from the pain I knew there would be blood, you see, I'm not the best flier around, and the only thing I can do well is soar, but when it comes to maneuvering, I'm about as graceful as a fish out of water. But for now it was enough.

The zombie must have smelled the blood on my knee as I flapped my wings hard and twisted in the air, enough so that I would be really freaking sore tomorrow, but now I was above it, and the zombie stood up and tried to grab me with flailing arms, this one looked male, and couldn't have been more than a teenager when infected. I stiffened, _No mercy, Lerial, no mercy. _I thought, pulling out my gun and whacking the zombie on the head from my point above it. It let out a mix between a howl and a groan, which was distorted by rotting vocal chords, but it was enough and between Chloe's driving, and my strike, the zombie fell off and tumbled on the road behind us.

We ended up in rural country, about a hundred kilometers from the ruined Seattle, but far enough to stop for a rest, I was still flying, taking advantage of the majorly straight road to soar a couple hundred meters above the Subaru.

In a way, it let me think, without Roxy chatting non-stop or Jacob and Chloe discussing bombs. Those two were close, Jacob and Chloe I mean, maybe because they hailed from the Gasman and Iggy, who from what I knew, had been good friends.

Still, the winged boy was at the back of my mind, and I couldn't shake it off, had there been, more experiments? Who the heck was he? I didn't like feeling out of control, but for some reason, some winged guy had saved me, and then gallivanted off to who-the-heck-knows-where.

In fact, I was so lost in thought, I continued flying even when Chloe had stopped the Subaru, and yelled my name. It took her a few yells and a bullet whizzing past my ear for me to snap out of it.

My natural response was to murder Chloe for trying to shoot me, but she had skill with guns, and knew how to aim, I did not, and if she was shooting, it was for a reason, I just went by the American method, 'Fire enough bullets and hope to hit the target.'


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Yo," I said as I landed—not that gracefully I might add—and glanced at Chloe, who was leaning against the car with her gun at her side, from what I knew, it was some kind of sniper, but I wasn't good at figuring out the makes of guns, I had a visual memory, and names were beyond me.

"So, camp in the trees for the night?" Roxy asked, walking over and nodding her head to the large copse of trees ahead of us. Here in the temperate rainforest, trees grew huge, but weather was unpredictable and it almost always rained. We could stay in the trees, but it would require a lot of climbing on all of our parts; well, not mine, but I would have to heave all the supplies up to the top.

"Do we have a choice?" Jacob asked, pulling out a bag which held non-perishables and handed it to me. I sighed and picked it up.

"Probably not, we'll need to hide the car too." Chloe said, pulling out a pistol and reloading it. All of us were pretty self-sufficient, but you should have seen us when we first got out of the lab and into this hellhole of a world, and it can be summed up pretty easily, read; EPIC FAIL.

Seriously, those two words were practically printed on our foreheads for the first three months of our trying-to-survive situation, but I digress. As Chloe got back in the car to try and drive it through the forest, I took back to the air with a twisting move that made my wings ache in all kinds of different ways. Looking down I realized that Roxy and Jacob were in the car too and were waiting for me to lead.

My job in this situation was to find a suitable tree for us to crash in, and as I rose up I scanned the copse of trees ahead, and noticed a good sized one near the side. Hmm, Chloe would have to drive over roots and grass though; I hoped the Subaru was sturdy enough to handle it.

I began my flight, and the near-distant rev of the engine followed. I only had to soar for twenty seconds at the most, and then I stopped on the branch of our target tree. I spread my golden-yellow wings out to their full length, a beacon for Chloe and the others to let them know where I was.

I don't know where the golden color came from though. From what I knew Dylan's wings were dark brown, whatever the Whitecoats added to me to re-activate the bird genes caused some weird color effects.

I was distracted from my reverie by Roxy's yell, and I turned to see her waving, and Jacob gesturing our bag of supplies. Muttering under my breath, I let myself fall off the branch and snapped out my wings to go down and carry my part of the load.

"Hey Leri, that's the tree you chose?" Jacob asked, his red eyes holding a question. I nodded and grabbed the bag he was holding.

"Pretty tall," Roxy commented, I gave her the middle finger and hauled the bag of supplies onto my back in between my wings.

As the others started to climb up the tree, I grabbed the bag tighter and flapped my wings hard and started the ascent into the tree. By the time the others had gotten up to an area where the branches were thick enough to sleep on, and the foliage was thick enough to conceal us, I had already secured the bag to the tree trunk with some ropes.

When we were all up on the branch, Roxy pulled out a map she had got from who-knows-where.

"Okay, here's Seattle, here's us, apparently there's some military base about five miles south of here, that's all I got so far." Roxy explained. I could understand what she meant by 'so far' the map was dirty, rotting, and mouldy, well, that's what happens when you have zombies around you 24/7.

"Kay, I'll keep watch, don't think I could get to sleep anyway." I said, stretching and folding my wings as tight as they would go, which was still quite visible on my back.

"Was it the black dot?" Chloe asked, I looked at her, and sighed.

"Yeah, we might get attacked by an army of black dots in the night, I'll kick their asses while you guys drool in your sleep." I said, smiling and trying to lighten the mood.

"I don't drool!" Roxy muttered, and shot me a shifty look. I shrugged and Jacob chuckled.

&%&%&%&%&%&%&%&%&%&%&%&

The night progressed and I still couldn't sleep, maybe it had been the guy with wings? Well, it had ben shocking to say the least.

I hadn't seen another person with wings since…my mother, and then she only had one wing, even though Dylan had wings, her mother, (My grandmother) was human. Damn fucked-up genetics. Oh, well, change what you can, accept what you can't.

A cracking noise startled me out of my thoughts, and I turned around slightly to see something take off into the sky.

"Oh hell no," I whispered and jumped out of the tree to catch up with it. I flapped my wings as hard as I could, trying to gain speed, but the dark shapes in front of me was faster, all of the sudden it started flying up, and in the silhouette brought on by the moonlight I saw the shape was humanoid with wings.

The same winged guy? I didn't believe in coincidences, so why the hell was he following us? Trying to catch up was proving hard though, with my crappy skills in flying, and even though it hurt my ego, I had to admit defeat and slow down, knowing I wouldn't catch him.

I then watched as he flew onwards towards the south and didn't stop, not once. Still, what just happened there?


End file.
